Departure
by Witchsistah
Summary: B-4 and Geordi have a talk before the android leaves to start a new life with his lover. Warnings: Could be triggering in some areas as there is discussion regarding issues of consent.


Author: Witchsistah  
Contact:  
Series: TNG  
Codes: D/f, L  
Story Type: Excerpt  
Rating: [PG-13]  
Parts: 1/1  
Summary: B-4 and Geordi have a talk before the android leaves to start a new life with his lover.

Warnings: Could be triggering in some areas as there is discussion regarding issues of consent.

Disclaimer: CBS-Paramount owns Star Trek. No infringement intended,  
no money being made. Have you SEEN this economy?! Don't even try to sue me.

Geordi walks down the hallway leading to B-4's bedroom for one last interview. Maybe he can persuade his former charge to rethink this rash decision he's made.

The door is open. B-4 must have programmed them to stay. Geordi knocks on the doorframe in warning.

"Can I come in?" he inquires leaning into the room.

B-4 nods tersely, not stopping his packing. The room is beginning to look bare as items are being taken from their customary places and packed away in various receptacles. Geordi seats himself on a chair near the bed. B-4 continues to fold garments into a valise—travelwear. Geordi doesn't know how to begin.

"I wish you'd think about this a little more before you make a hasty decision."

The folding continues.

"Be reasonable!"

Shirts are neatly placed inside.

"**You** don't have to go anywhere!"

The packing stops abruptly.

"I take it from your specific emphasis on my not having to depart that Maarhit still must?" asked B-4 not looking away from the hill of clothes on his bed.

LaForge sighs, "You know she can't stay."

"Then I go with her!"

The packing resumes. Geordi holds his head in his hands wanting to shake B-4 even though he knows he'd never be able to shift the android.

"How can I let her stay after her breech of trust?" he reasons, " Her lack of judgment!"

B-4 closes the lid of the valise a bit too firmly showing his exasperation with the subject of the conversation.

"How can I convince you that she—that **WE** did not do anything wrong?"

"She did! She came here, and I let her stay on the condition that she was to look after you when I was away working. Instead she—"

"She what, Geordi? Worked her wicked, feminine wiles on me? When are you going to realize that it was not her fault? Hell, if you want to blame anyone, blame _me_! _I'm_ the one who initiated our relationship—all of it! I was the pursuer. I was **her** vile seducer, not the other way around!"

Geordi suddenly feels tired. He surveys at the half-packed room. B-4 has taken his pictures down and stacked them against a far wall under a window. But the stacks seem to be too copious to contain those pictures. LaForge wonders if the pictures he discovered in the android's room are among them.

His mind wanders back in time. If only he had decided to stay in the Engineering Lab and ask Leah Brahms out on that date he'd long been contemplating instead of chickening out and coming home early. He wouldn't have overheard feminine laughter coming from B-4's room when he went looking for the android. If only he hadn't opened the door. He wouldn't have seen the conduct that gave the behaviors he'd noticed over the past few months new meaning.

But he didn't think anything of the laughter initially. He didn't suspect anything sinister. All it told him was that Maarhit was in B-4's room, as she often was. He didn't think he'd interrupt a rather intimate portrait session with the artist in a similar state of undress as his subject.

He remembered questioning B-4 after ordering both of them to cover themselves and for Maarhit to go directly to her room.

How long had this been going on?

The android was direct, "'This'referring to what? The relationship or the sex?"

B-4 leans over the closed case supported by his hands. His eyes are shut and a wry grin breaks out across his face as he begins to slowly shake his head back and forth.

"Once again with **feeling**! She did not take advantage of me! She didn't even know I had those sorts of feelings for her!" He looks up pointedly directly at Geordi, "Though I've had them for a **long** while. I just couldn't do anything about them, not until my intelligence and processing skills had greatly increased. And believe me, when they did, I wasted little time in letting her know exactly what they were!"

Geordi grits his teeth a little against this, "B-4, is this all for real?"

"You mean is this just a good time?" the android asked as he rose to his full height, folded his arms against his chest and looked down at LaForge, "As difficult as it apparently is for you to believe, we are in love. Yes, the both of us, with each other even! Granted I was the first to succumb…but I wooed her and she eventually followed suit. She was extremely conscientious, way more than you give her credit for.

"At first, she brushed me off thinking I was merely joking or teasing her. I don't blame her. I seem to have a distinct strain of insouciance in my personality program. Part of my overall charm. I knew I had to approach her in a more seriously romantic manner. I did a lot of research as well as probed the memories left me by my late brother."

Geordi's chest tightens a little at the reference to Data, but B-4 apparently does not notice or does not let it deter him from his narrative.

"Having the mind of an android has its advantages. I correlated those with memories of my interactions with Maarhit, as well as general observations of her behavior and exhibitions of her apparent character and came up with a strategy to win her affections."

*Sounds very familiar,* thinks Geordi. * It is very much like the process Data performed when he attempted a relationship with Jenna DeSora.*

"It took a while at first to convince her of the honorability of my intentions and then to show her that I was truly ready for a committed, **mature** relationship. She was even more worried than you that I was not mentally yet an adult. The last thing she wanted was to take advantage of me in any way."

B-4 leans back down onto the case.

"Trust me when I say nobody got 'bad-touched' or coerced in any way. I assure you I was very much a grown-up when Maarhit and I started having sex. In fact, we were both virgins and each other's first and sole partners if that eases your mind any. Now if you'll please hand me that book on your right on the desk."

Geordi reaches slightly behind him for the book B-4 indicated. As he passes the rather large tome to his former charge, he briefly wonders why B-4 would have anything as anachronistic as a book with covers and pages in-between until he notices the title.

_The Fully Illustrated Kama Sutra_.

B-4 takes the book from him and puts it to the side of the valise. Is he trying to make sure Geordi sees the title? Is he being provocative right down to the coy manner which he seems to nonchalantly direct LaForge's attention to it and keeps the tome within plain view?

Strains of insouciance is right.

Is Geordi using his manufactured vision to look through the pages of the closed book at some of the illustrations? Can the former Starfleet engineer see page 163 through all the leaves? Ah, page 163! Now B-4 really, **really** liked page 163. A bit tricky that pose but well worth it if you got the balance right. Is Geordi wondering how many of the positions B-4 and Maarhit have attempted? They probably could have performed more than any normal human couple, being what they both were.

Dare Geordi even think it? The mild insolence, the cheekiness. B-4 resumes packing.

If LaForge didn't know that Q is currently the paramour of and utterly concerned with his former Captain he'd swear Q morphed himself into the android's shell and possessed him. There is something of Q in B-4.

Geordi shakes his head and brings his thoughts back to the present moment. He doesn't know if the items the android is stowing now are traveling with them or going into storage. Following LaForge's gaze, B-4 replies, "My drawings will be in the safekeeping of one of our neighbors. I think it would be too difficult to take them with us. When we're established somewhere, I'll send for them."

*Not the meticulous planner and organizer like Data was,* Geordi thought . Data would have diligently researched various worlds, factored in Maarhit's preferences, come up with an equation and gotten a sampling of viable possibilities which he would have discussed with Maarhit to make a determination of their destination. Instead, it seems that their plan was to wing it and see where the cosmic wind blew them. Geordi tells him this, and the android snatches up the salacious tome and slams it down hard onto the valise.

"**I AM NOT DATA**!"

Geordi starts. He has never seen B-4 this upset or agitated, not even the night LaForge told him that he had fired Maarhit and that she had to leave his home for her part in their relationship. If B-4 were human, his face would probably have been a red alert.

"Don't you get it? Don't you understand? I am not Data. I never will be Data. I do not **want** to be Data!"

LaForge wonders if it were a good idea to broach this conversation with B-4 while Maarhit was out, watching the android closely and estimating how far he is from the still-open door.

B-4's apparent disregard for rules and propriety.

It is reminiscent of Lore.

Part of the reason why Geordi wants B-4 to stay is to monitor him to see if his charge is going the way of his younger brother. But so much of B-4 seems to defy the parameters set by Data or Lore. Both his little brothers were very organized and orderly, even Lore in his demented hatred. Though B-4's room is currently disorganized due to packing, he seemed to pride himself on keeping it as cluttered and disorderly as his andriod nature allowed. Even when packing, Data would have been systematic causing the least amount of disorder.

"And I'm not Lore either!" B-4 states, noticing his guardian's sudden wariness, "God! Is that your whole definition of who I am? Are those my only options? I can be the self-sacrificing Saint Data was or I can be the monster Lore?!" If he had a stomach it'd feel slightly sour right about now.

B-4 slouches himself onto the bed, throwing a leg over clothes that had just been rather nicely folded, mussing them. He closes his eyes tightly and bangs his head back against the headboard three times. Geordi knows he has not hurt himself being made of the same materials as both Lore and Data. Rather the headboard is the victim of his frustations and exhibits a dent. He nestles his head into the dent and heaves a long sigh.

"And I don't want to be either Data or Lore--or my father."

Geordi chances addressing him, "B-4, you don't have to be. You can be anything you want. Though with your intellect you can excel at any field you choose. I just have a difficult time figuring out why--"

He turns his head towards LaForge again.

"Why I don't want to engage in one of the sciences like my kinsmen and forebears? Why I don't join a venerated institution like Starfleet? Why I want to be a heathen, bohemian, artist instead?"

Geordi silently wonders exactly that. As the last of the Soong androids and thanks to Data's stellar career paving the way, B-4 would be welcome in any scientific community as a practitioner. He could easily acquire the proper credentials and would even be better at politics than Data since he possessed emotions from the start. At least science afforded objective standards to measure oneself against. Even Starfleet provided that. Why he wanted the peripatetic lifestyle and subjective craft of an artist was mystifying to the former Chief Engineer and now designer of engineering systems for the latest starships.

"It's true that both my father and little brothers made names for themselves in the scientific community though one of them as a specimen, but still that's neither here nor there," B-4 gestures these accomplishments away with a dismissive wave of his hand, "But none of them made much of a life for themselves. Lore basically pursued one scheme after another trying to revenge himself on humanity and is now in pieces in various labs at the Daystrom Institute. My father, while a dedicated scientist was such a lousy husband that even the woman he **built** left him!"

"But Data was not like either of them," LaForge countered, "He didn't pursue and cause chaos like Lore. And he wasn't alone like Dr. Soong. He had his rank and duties as a Lt. Commander aboard the flagship of the Federation. He served underneath one of its best captains. He had his interests. He had friends—"

"And a cat. Don't forget the cat."

Geordi pursed his lips, "The point I am trying to make is that Data did not have such a bad life. In fact, he experienced enough for several lifetimes. If you're trying to paint him as some sort of failure, don't dare! You don't have the right!"

B-4 sees his guardian's face, the pain in it. This is the closest he's seen the man grieve for his younger brother in years. He doesn't want to be cruel. He owes Geordi so much. He even owes him for this chance at love and life he's taking. Despite the past weeks of acrimony between them, B-4 does not want to hurt the man. But LaForge must understand his reasons before he leaves.

"You're right," B-4 says as he sits up to address LaForge, "Data led an interesting life in many respects. But I have his memories and recollections of some of the emotions he experienced related to them."

B-4 softens his face and voice, knowing what he is about to say will distress the man who was much more his father than his creator ever was.

"He was lonely a lot of the time, Geordi. And frightened. He didn't tell you. He didn't tell anyone. He felt it his duty and responsibility to deal with the emotions and not burden anyone else with them. He watched all of you all those years and used you as a measure of his progress in that endeavor," he pauses before approaches the painful part, "Why do you think he sacrificed himself to save Captain Picard?"

No one else would see it, except perhaps Maarhit if she were present, but not much escapes an android's eyes. He sees a slight contraction in Geordi. The wound still aches, plays up from time to time. He is probably going to rip it open again with his narrative.

B-4 remembers when he was in Picard's care before LaForge asked to take custody of him. The captain, realizing he could not be the sole guardian and caretaker of the android and fulfill his duties, granted the request. But before then, he remembers the captain recording his private journal and wondering aloud why Data would sacrifice himself for a man who had at best 80 years without Irumidian Syndrome while Data had theoretically an eternity of life to live.

Back then, B-4 could not process the memories. He watched them like a movie without understanding the import of what he was viewing. Now he can.

"For all his superior abilities and your human frailties, he didn't think the quality of his life was as good as a human's--any human's. So who deserved to live more, someone who was very much a father figure to him or a tin-can that was at best a facsimile of a man? It was a no-brainer to him."

Geordi's head is bowed, his closed eyes against the tears.

"I know none of you saw him that way, least of all you. But **he** did. I don't want to end up like that, wondering if I'm real, thinking I'm just a really clever science project," he acknowledges as he leans back against the headboard.

"And besides, generations of Soongs have given their all for science and what has it gotten us? They've sacrificed their inner worlds for the big outer ones in the name of discovery. And they declared that they focused on what was really important. I think that declaration is made up wholly of sour grapes.

"I don't want to end up like any of my predecessors going to bed with a padd and calculations and variables. You Starfleet folk do get more than your share of adrenalin rushes, and do a lot of good, but from my brother's memories, it seems a lot of you experience the afterglow alone. You had the satisfaction of a job well done and went back to empty quarters at the end of your shifts. Some of you tried to provide yourselves with a series of temporary, utterly convenient relationships. Some of you bit the bullet and married, but it was either late in your lives when you were sure of your careers or, if earlier, the odds of the union surviving were not good. All those years of duty keeping you warm at night. With my father, all those years of what? Equations? Prototypes? Positronic brain models? The Soong men have given enough to the realms of science and exploration. We've sacrificed enough to those ravenous gods."

Geordi had to admit that much of what B-4 said was right. How many of his friends felt that marriage, family, committed relationships didn't mix with advancement in Starfleet or other careers. Riker had only married Troi after years of cat-and-mouse dancing around each other and only once he got his Captaincy. O'Brien had married, but according to Worf, had remained a Chief. Worf had married but his happiness was cut so short. How many relationships had he watched come and go, killed in embryo by devotion to duty?

"B-4, I want to ask you something, but…no, it's too personal and none of my business."

B-4 senses what the question is. It is the only question that hasn't been asked that should have been the first one because it would have answered all the others, "What is it?"

"Why Maarhit? There were plenty of other women, young women, pretty women here you could have chosen to have your first—experiences with. Why her?"

B-4 sighs partly from the fond memories of his courtship.

"You know, she wanted to know that too. She was afraid that I wanted to experiment with love to see what it felt like, and I just chose her because she was convenient.

"When I said I was in love with her for a long time, I meant it. Even when I was—impaired. Of course, I didn't know what those feelings meant. I only knew I really liked being around her and greatly looked forward to spending time with her in any way possible. It didn't matter what it was--going to town for supplies, taking long walks, doing repairs here, gardening--as long as I could be with her.

"I'm a greedy little android. I want it all, or at least as much as I can grasp and hold onto. But I also want someone to share it with. I remember when I discovered some new flower, animal or rock, I ran and showed Maarhit first. That was better than actually having found the thing in the first place. As I gained intelligence that feeling didn't change. My feelings for her didn't change, just grew new dimensions.

"When my intelligence grew I still had those feelings, except they deepened because I began to understand what they were. She was always nice to me, always kind. She comforted me when I'd get upset or frustrated. She was always so patient with me.

"You know one of the real reasons I love Maarhit?"

Geordi stares at him awaiting his explanation.

"Because I'm starting with a clean slate with her. She never knew either Data or Lore. Oh, she's heard of them. Read reports about them. Studied their schematics. She had to in order to assist you with me," he settles back into the damaged headboard, "But she's never experienced them. They were plans she studied, not real. She has nothing to compare me to. She's not evaluating me against someone else's yardstick. No figuring out how much I'm like or unlike Data or how much I'm like Lore. I **am** real to her, an original, not a facsimile of someone else. She has no expectations of me except what I promised her which is to love her and keep her as safe and happy as I can for as long as she'll let me. And it's nice to be seen that way and not constantly be compared to someone else. It's liberating."

And then it finally hits LaForge. Both B-4 and Maarhit will be gone in a matter of weeks at the most. And he will be all alone—again.

As if sensing Geordi's thoughts, the android inquires, "So, what are you going to do with yourself once we've cleared out?"

Geordi's face shows the indecision and slight pain. He tries to conceal it by soundly falsely glib, "I dunno. Maybe I'll make your room into an extra lab and Maarhit's into an exercise gym."

B-4 smiles wanly at him, "Let me give you a bit of advice though I know you're not used to taking it from me. Do yourself a favor. Put yourself out of your own misery and ask her out."

LaForge tries to sputter out a denial of knowing what his charge could be referring to, before B-4 interrupts him.

"You've been pining over Leah Brahms for what now, 12 years? That's waaaaaaaaaaaay too long to be carrying a torch for someone. It's definitely time to shit or get off the pot."

"In spite of your colorful exhortations, I can't."

"Why not?"

"It's complicated."

The android waits patiently for an explanation he knows will not come.

"She's too…There are issues…The timing's…"Geordi sighs, "What if she says no?"

"Then at least you'll know for sure, and you'll be able to move on. Honestly, there's more than one woman in the galaxy to love."

"Would you have felt the same if Maarhit had refused you?"

The android breaks into a wide grin, "Clever! Clever!"

"Well, would you?"

B-4 sighs, "It would have hurt--hurt like hell--but I would have tried to understand because if I love her enough, I want to see her happy, even if it weren't going to be with me," he breaks out into a used-transporter saleman's grin, "But I'd threaten the man she did find an interest in with instant transportation to the Uralian Hellplains if he were to harm her in any way, shape or form."

LaForge smirks slightly at the response.

B-4 gets up off the bed and looks down at the rumpled clothes he's supposed to be packing. A few locks of hair fall into his face and he smooths them behind his ears for the umpteenth time. Geordi thinks it interesting, if a little bothersome, that B-4 is so trying not to be mistaken for either of his brothers down to utilizing his hair growth program to cultivate his locks. Right now it is at that awkward stage of not being long enough to do much with except gather as much as he could into a short ponytail at the nape of his neck, how he now wears it. But a few front hairs are not long enough to be fastened by the haircatch and escape their paltry confines every time B-4 bends his head forward. He could have literally grown a head of mid-back-length hair literally overnight, but programmed it for the human growth rate apparently to experience the frustration of the in-between state. But one can begin to discern its eventual wavy texture. B-4 decided against growing facial hair due to the memories he carried of his brother's experimentations.

Not a good look.

The android sighs and decides that his clothes are too mussed to be packed away. Who knew cultivating an affected slovenliness would be so involved? He shakes out each garment and begins to refold them, then he looks up, remembering that Geordi is still in the room.

"Was there anything else?"

"No, I guess not," LaForge says as he rises from the seat. He goes to the door and stops in the frame, looking back once at the busily packing android and at the clearing room. He suppresses a sigh and walks up the hallway.

B-4 listens to his former guardian's fading steps. He hears the slide of a door open and close and knows that Geordi has left the house.

He hopes Geordi will take his earlier advice about Dr. Brahms. Despite their often-heated differences of recent weeks, he does still care about the man and is concerned about him being alone for the first time in his life. It would be good if LaForge has someone he can love too.

The android smirks. Maybe he should replicate his copy of the _Kama Sutra_ and leave it for Geordi…just in case though he's sure page 163 would put him in sickbay for days and in physical therapy for a few weeks.

But it'd be well worth it!


End file.
